Saturday, March 23, 2013

Today I Broke the Four-Minute Mile

This morning I ran four miles, part of my training for a June half-marathon. It was very cold and very windy, typical March weather for my town.

Anyway, I pushed the “start” button on my trusty Runkeeper appand discovered it could not find the GPS satellite. This is not uncommon; my car's GPS often shows me driving through my neighbor’s bedroom and across the pond near our house. Usually if I wait a minute or two I’m OK and my app is happy.

For those of you who don’t use a running app, I recommend Runkeeper. It does a fantastic job keeping time and distance, except for the mean lady who keeps whispering in my ear telling me how slow I’m running.

This morning, though, I fell in love with that lady. Here’s why.

The wind was howling and I was standing there frozen, so instead of waiting to find the GPS, I hit “Continue” on the app and the 15 second countdown began. Runkeeper has a warning that things may not be all that accurate if it can't find the GPS satellite at the start, but no matter. It was death by exposure or death by exertion. I chose exertion and off I went.

Two minutes into my run, about the time I'm usually gasping for air, that mean lady whispered in my ear, “Time, two minutes. Distance, point five-five miles.”